Gaia Hypothesis

[dimreepr]

22 minutes ago, studiot said:

Have you seen the comments on this in my previous post?

 

I said there would be more

Look at these notes about equilibrium, and perhaps Wikipedia.

The idea is that a system is in

stable equilibrium if following a small displacement or disturbance it returns to the original state.

Unstable equilibrium it moves (rapidly) to another state

Metastable equilibrium if it may do either.

My example is a marble in a bowl (stable)

a marble on a bowl (unstable)

a marble on a ledge (metastable)

The importance of this is that it provides a restorative mechanism for the process of disturbance without feedback.

'The importance of being Earnest', explored a similar line of thought...

[joigus]

54 minutes ago, studiot said:

Have you seen the comments on this in my previous post?

Yes, thank you. It's true that it's usually stated that the Earth is a closed system. This might be true if you are calculating, say, primary production over a series of years, for which the flux of matter is irrelevant. Certainly not in the long run. I hope you agree with this.

[TheVat]

13 hours ago, studiot said:

The climate in any given place depends firstly upon where that place is on Earth.

I think there was some misunderstanding.  I wasn't questioning that geography affects area climate, a fairly obvious assertion.  But you said climate was primarily controlled by plate tectonics, which seemed to be saying more, and about global climate.  It is not clear e.g. that having all the land in a supercontinent near a pole is the primary cause of a snowball earth period.  I can see how it would be a factor, especially in terms of having a high-albedo ice field of great size and at a latitude where it would persist..  Perhaps I misunderstood, but climate changes seem to happen from factors other than where all the land happens to be.  Hence the request for citation, a request that @Agent Smith may not have quite understood - no clue what his little graphic meant there.   

It's okay, I will research this myself and the chat can move on.

[Agent Smith]

Just now, TheVat said:

I think there was some misunderstanding.  I wasn't questioning that geography affects area climate, a fairly obvious assertion.  But you said climate was primarily controlled by plate tectonics, which seemed to be saying more, and about global climate.  It is not clear e.g. that having all the land in a supercontinent near a pole is the primary cause of a snowball earth period.  I can see how it would be a factor, especially in terms of having a high-albedo ice field of great size and at a latitude where it would persist..  Perhaps I misunderstood, but climate changes seem to happen from factors other than where all the land happens to be.  Hence the request for citation, a request that @Agent Smith may not have quite understood - no clue what his little graphic meant there.   

It's okay, I will research this myself and the chat can move on.

The energy levels of Plate tectonics is colossal (?); earth quakes are measured on a logarithmic scale. Where does the energy go? Millions of kilograms of mass moving even at a slow rate of an inch/hour could be the source of huge amounts of energy that has to go ... somewhere. Pure speculation

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Have you seen the comments on this in my previous post?

 

I said there would be more

Look at these notes about equilibrium, and perhaps Wikipedia.

The idea is that a system is in

stable equilibrium if following a small displacement or disturbance it returns to the original state.

Unstable equilibrium it moves (rapidly) to another state

Metastable equilibrium if it may do either.

My example is a marble in a bowl (stable)

a marble on a bowl (unstable)

a marble on a ledge (metastable)

The importance of this is that it provides a restorative mechanism for the process of disturbance without feedback.

More of this later.

Faint recollections of having seen these images before in chemistry, related to activation energy. Where does the evidence point though? Can you expand and elaborate on without feedback? 

 

 

2 hours ago, joigus said:

I don't know, to be honest. I suppose whether you work on marine biology or epigenetics, it is of little consequence to your work. The discipline I would assume it is likely to influence more is evolutionary biology. But again, I don't really know. I figure it would be difficult to evaluate the actual level of impact on scientists' minds.

👍

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Have you guys heard of 'Daisy World'? This is the model used to explain GH in its most basic terms. Here's a NASA vid on the subject of albedo and negative feedback loops. 

 

Gracias. The simulation proves that The Gaia Hypothesis is possible and is a candidate hypothesis for terran stability. Is there more?

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Have you seen the comments on this in my previous post?

 

I said there would be more

Look at these notes about equilibrium, and perhaps Wikipedia.

The idea is that a system is in

stable equilibrium if following a small displacement or disturbance it returns to the original state.

Unstable equilibrium it moves (rapidly) to another state

Metastable equilibrium if it may do either.

My example is a marble in a bowl (stable)

a marble on a bowl (unstable)

a marble on a ledge (metastable)

The importance of this is that it provides a restorative mechanism for the process of disturbance without feedback.

More of this later.

 

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Please check your definitions.

 

There are umpteen explanations and diagrams on the net.

 

Yes that is correct

Yes that is correct

The water, and other geological cycles, are still processes.

Note that most chemical reactions are actually multistep and the kinetics can be very complicated.

I prefer to use the word stage rather than step because step I can then Identify a stage with a formal state and a step which is part of the way and may be near instantaneous.

 

I will address other points more fully later

My God, cognitive decline! You are right of course and I have misled @Agent Smith by telling him he was wrong when he is perfectly right!  Apologies all round. Time for my nap.........😄

[StringJunky]

3 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

Gracias. The simulation proves that The Gaia Hypothesis is possible and is a candidate hypothesis for terran stability. Is there more?

Just search for Daisy World. I'm sure you'll find more mathematical treatments. It's used by NASA to determine the potential of life on planets and requirements for colonization. It's not pseudo-garbage. The range of its influence in natural processes is still unclear though. Lovelock will be 102 in a few days, I read.

Geological sulphur chemistry, such as at hydrothermal vents interacting with bacterial species is an example of where life interfaces with the inorganic, geological processes. Marine organisms, like phytoplankton, producing dimethyl sulphide (DMS) that is an initial step to the formation of rain clouds. Sulphur cycle. Lovelock's books are worth reading. He was the first to use microwave radiation from a continuous wave magnetron to cook a potato in 1954. Smart chap. His anthropomorphization of living systems interacting with natural processes has annoyed some scientists over years, but the guts of what he says has stood the test of time, I think. NASA uses uses it as a model, so, there's that.

 

Edited July 17 by StringJunky

[sethoflagos]

11 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

@sethoflagos, really good examples of (positive/negative) feedback mechanisms, but you seem reluctant to jump on board, for good reasons of course. If we have real instances of authentic homeostasis then, at the very least, The Gaia Hypothesis can't be ruled out with confidence.

At best, GH seems to say no more than stable is stable, unstable is unstable. What is there to disagree?

At worst, it implies (at least for some adherents) that stable is good, unstable is bad. This strikes me as more of a political idea than a scientific one. 

Looking back over the last half billion years or so, the Cambrian, later Devonian, late Carboniferous, the Triassic and early Cenozoic were all periods of great biotic instability. These amount to a substantial time percentage of the total. But far from being negative, each of these episodes led to major diversifications and advances of life forms, far more so than the 'good' periods of relative stability. Arguably, stability tends towards a gradual decline as the reduced need to adapt quickly often leads to the loss of the power to adapt quickly. Evolutionary potential tends to be remain concentrated in the small, generalist and opportunistic forms who often lead the recovery of life after an extinction event. 

If you want a more political allegory, try the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons. Similar ideas.

[studiot]

8 hours ago, exchemist said:

My God, cognitive decline! You are right of course and I have misled @Agent Smith by telling him he was wrong when he is perfectly right!  Apologies all round. Time for my nap.........😄

Don't nap too long, your posts are normally pretty good and I for one would miss them.

+1 for the comment though.

 

9 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

The energy levels of Plate tectonics is colossal (?); earth quakes are measured on a logarithmic scale. Where does the energy go? Millions of kilograms of mass moving even at a slow rate of an inch/hour could be the source of huge amounts of energy that has to go ... somewhere.

Indeed so.  Do you think quakes are indicative of stability or instability ?

In fact their energy is a small portion of the energy that goes into mountain building and other tectonic processes.

There is no feedback here. They are a classic demonstration of Monsiur thom's 'catastrophe theory'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_theory

 

9 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

Faint recollections of having seen these images before in chemistry, related to activation energy. Where does the evidence point though? Can you expand and elaborate on without feedback? 

These are similar to the activation energy diagrams you refer to but they are not the same.

The AE diagrams are plots or diagrams of energy.

My sketches refer to a real world marble rolling about in a bowl, where it finds a stable position at the bottom and stays there.
Jiggling the bowl to give a small displacement will temporarily move the marble some way up the side.
But it will soon roll back.

This provides a non feedback stabilising mechanism.

The second picture shows the marble perched on top of the upturned bowl.
The slightest vibration or puff of wind will set the marble rolling down the side and away.
This is an unstable situation again with no feedback.

 

6 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Just search for Daisy World. I'm sure you'll find more mathematical treatments. It's used by NASA to determine the potential of life on planets and requirements for colonization. It's not pseudo-garbage. The range of its influence in natural processes is still unclear though. Lovelock will be 102 in a few days, I read.

Interesting thanks +1

 

It should be noted that the ideas of Gaia appeared when most earth scientists still clung to the Uniformitarianism of Hutton and Lyell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformitarianism

 

Today we know much better and I again recommend the Chris Packham videos which can also be obtained fromsellers for those who can't access the BBC iplayer.

these can be obtained from many suppliers eg

https://headrecords.co.uk/special-interest/earthchris-packham/p-bbcdvd4550

9 hours ago, TheVat said:

I think there was some misunderstanding.  I wasn't questioning that geography affects area climate, a fairly obvious assertion.  But you said climate was primarily controlled by plate tectonics, which seemed to be saying more, and about global climate.  It is not clear e.g. that having all the land in a supercontinent near a pole is the primary cause of a snowball earth period.  I can see how it would be a factor, especially in terms of having a high-albedo ice field of great size and at a latitude where it would persist..  Perhaps I misunderstood, but climate changes seem to happen from factors other than where all the land happens to be.  Hence the request for citation, a request that @Agent Smith may not have quite understood - no clue what his little graphic meant there.   

It's okay, I will research this myself and the chat can move on.

Yes yo uare quite right to ask for sources and the Packham DVD's, linked above contain all the references to your question, whchich is discussed in detail, as are many other questions like

Where did the water come from ?

What was the composition of the early atmousphere?

Where did the oxygen come from ?

How did life survive snowball earth ?

What are the changes and implications for evolution that life has wrought?

 

and many more.

[Agent Smith]

4 hours ago, studiot said:

Indeed so.  Do you think quakes are indicative of stability or instability ?

In fact their energy is a small portion of the energy that goes into mountain building and other tectonic processes.

There is no feedback here. They are a classic demonstration of Monsiur thom's 'catastrophe theory'.

Hard to say. If by stability you mean whether the earth's geology has "settled down", no. If you mean something else, I don't know.

 

4 hours ago, studiot said:

This provides a non feedback stabilising mechanism.

The conversion of kinetic to potential energy, back and forth, is feedback, no? As the marble moves up, the kinetic energy it has transforms into potential energy, which is then used to propel the marble back down and so on. Also, this is a physical phenomenon; what about chemical reactions?

5 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

At best, GH seems to say no more than stable is stable, unstable is unstable. What is there to disagree?

At worst, it implies (at least for some adherents) that stable is good, unstable is bad. This strikes me as more of a political idea than a scientific one. 

Looking back over the last half billion years or so, the Cambrian, later Devonian, late Carboniferous, the Triassic and early Cenozoic were all periods of great biotic instability. These amount to a substantial time percentage of the total. But far from being negative, each of these episodes led to major diversifications and advances of life forms, far more so than the 'good' periods of relative stability. Arguably, stability tends towards a gradual decline as the reduced need to adapt quickly often leads to the loss of the power to adapt quickly. Evolutionary potential tends to be remain concentrated in the small, generalist and opportunistic forms who often lead the recovery of life after an extinction event. 

If you want a more political allegory, try the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons. Similar ideas.

Si, earth sciences is a baby when compared to all the other sciences. 

10 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Just search for Daisy World. I'm sure you'll find more mathematical treatments. It's used by NASA to determine the potential of life on planets and requirements for colonization. It's not pseudo-garbage. The range of its influence in natural processes is still unclear though. Lovelock will be 102 in a few days, I read.

Geological sulphur chemistry, such as at hydrothermal vents interacting with bacterial species is an example of where life interfaces with the inorganic, geological processes. Marine organisms, like phytoplankton, producing dimethyl sulphide (DMS) that is an initial step to the formation of rain clouds. Sulphur cycle. Lovelock's books are worth reading. He was the first to use microwave radiation from a continuous wave magnetron to cook a potato in 1954. Smart chap. His anthropomorphization of living systems interacting with natural processes has annoyed some scientists over years, but the guts of what he says has stood the test of time, I think. NASA uses uses it as a model, so, there's that.

 

I haven't had time to read Lovelock's profile. Good points.

Quote

Lovelock argues that no single mechanism is responsible, that the connections between the various known mechanisms may never be known, that this is accepted in other fields of biology and ecology as a matter of course, and that specific hostility is reserved for his own hypothesis for other reasons

 

Edited July 18 by Agent Smith

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, Agent Smith said:

Hard to say. If by stability you mean whether the earth's geology has "settled down", no. If you mean something else, I don't know.

 

The conversion of kinetic to potential energy, back and forth, is feedback, no? As the marble moves up, the kinetic energy it has transforms into potential energy, which is then used to propel the marble back down and so on. Also, this is a physical phenomenon; what about chemical reactions?

Si, earth sciences is a baby when compared to all the other sciences. 

I haven't had time to read Lovelock's profile. Good points.

 

Here's an overview from Harvard:

https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Gaia/Gaia-hypothesis-wikipedia.pdf

[studiot]

4 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Here's an overview from Harvard:

https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Gaia/Gaia-hypothesis-wikipedia.pdf

Interesting find. Thank you +1.

 

Do you or does anyone else have comments on this pdf?

I think it is easy to come away with the impression that Gaia is a done and dusted theory by reading it.

 

 

6 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

The conversion of kinetic to potential energy, back and forth, is feedback, no? As the marble moves up, the kinetic energy it has transforms into potential energy, which is then used to propel the marble back down and so on. Also, this is a physical phenomenon; what about chemical reactions?

No.

In the light of StringJunky's Harvard article and your reply I think it wothwile agreeing on what we mean by 'feedback'.

Yes my example is mechanical because mechanical examples can be much simpler. If you want chemical,

Would you call auto-catalysis feedback ?

[Agent Smith]

5 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Here's an overview from Harvard:

https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Gaia/Gaia-hypothesis-wikipedia.pdf

 

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Interesting find. Thank you +1.

 

Do you or does anyone else have comments on this pdf?

I think it is easy to come away with the impression that Gaia is a done and dusted theory by reading it. 

 

1 hour ago, studiot said:

 

 

No.

In the light of StringJunky's Harvard article and your reply I think it wothwile agreeing on what we mean by 'feedback'.

Yes my example is mechanical because mechanical examples can be much simpler. If you want chemical,

Would you call auto-catalysis feedback ?

If what you say is what the Harvard report says then it's quite sad. @StringJunky was astute enough to refer to mathematical treatments: The Daisy World Sim looked so convincing. Ok so The Gaia Hypothesis doesn't have takers, but the reasons for that, as far as I can see, seems to be more emotional than evidential. Has the hypothesis been disproven/falsified? Are there alternative hypotheses for the apparent stability of the biosphere?

Edited July 18 by Agent Smith

[studiot]

52 minutes ago, Agent Smith said:

 

 

If what you say is what the Harvard report says then it's quite sad. @StringJunky was astute enough to refer to mathematical treatments: The Daisy World Sim looked so convincing. Ok so The Gaia Hypothesis doesn't have takers, but the reasons for that, as far as I can see, seems to be more emotional than evidential. Has the hypothesis been disproven/falsified? Are there alternative hypotheses for the apparent stability in the biosphere?

The answers to these are already contained in my previous responses.

Have you not read them, and taken them on board?

I put a lot of work into them but you have only responded to a few of them.

 

The Harvard article admits that what it means by the Gaia Hypothesis is rather different from the original, and only represents an observed stabilisation of the status quo of modern times.

 

The modern times is crucial because there have been other stabilised environmental regimes on Earth, some lasting longer than ours and all very very different from ours.
So much so that the original conditions that spawned life would be poisonous to us and equally our conditions would be poisonous to the original life on earth.

A growth area in research in Applied Mathematics is the study of extremal points or maximal and minimal systems.
Taking from this I am suggesting that our current modern Gaia is a local such phenomenon.

 

Does this help ?

 

 

 

 

[Agent Smith]

50 minutes ago, studiot said:

The answers to these are already contained in my previous responses.

Have you not read them, and taken them on board?

I put a lot of work into them but you have only responded to a few of them.

 

The Harvard article admits that what it means by the Gaia Hypothesis is rather different from the original, and only represents an observed stabilisation of the status quo of modern times.

 

The modern times is crucial because there have been other stabilised environmental regimes on Earth, some lasting longer than ours and all very very different from ours.
So much so that the original conditions that spawned life would be poisonous to us and equally our conditions would be poisonous to the original life on earth.

A growth area in research in Applied Mathematics is the study of extremal points or maximal and minimal systems.
Taking from this I am suggesting that our current modern Gaia is a local such phenomenon.

 

Does this help ?

 

 

 

 

I have read your posts. I probably missed/forgot the parts where you statements are answers/responses to my questions/comments. So there's counterevidence to The Gaia Hypothesis? I did mention the Wikipage on the topic has links to natural balance, which some say is false, even the very intuitive predator-prey population cycles have been debunked (allegedly). I can't imagine how the biosphere is maintained in a stable state then, without a feedback loop system things will just fall apart and it hasn't for so long. Drawing an analogy from the human body, which has what is called functional reserve, I'd say the stability we see is only because the biosphere has a huge functional reserve. Fun fact: Per some book, 90% of kidney parenchyma has to fail before symptoms of renal failure manifest.

[dimreepr]

1 hour ago, Agent Smith said:

I have read your posts. I probably missed/forgot the parts where you statements are answers/responses to my questions/comments. So there's counterevidence to The Gaia Hypothesis? I did mention the Wikipage on the topic has links to natural balance, which some say is false, even the very intuitive predator-prey population cycles have been debunked (allegedly). I can't imagine how the biosphere is maintained in a stable state then, without a feedback loop system things will just fall apart and it hasn't for so long. Drawing an analogy from the human body, which has what is called functional reserve, I'd say the stability we see is only because the biosphere has a huge functional reserve. Fun fact: Per some book, 90% of kidney parenchyma has to fail before symptoms of renal failure manifest.

What exactly is your question? 

It seems to be lost down this rabbit hole, I found...

[StringJunky]

6 hours ago, Agent Smith said:

 

 

If what you say is what the Harvard report says then it's quite sad. @StringJunky was astute enough to refer to mathematical treatments: The Daisy World Sim looked so convincing. Ok so The Gaia Hypothesis doesn't have takers, but the reasons for that, as far as I can see, seems to be more emotional than evidential. Has the hypothesis been disproven/falsified? Are there alternative hypotheses for the apparent stability of the biosphere?

Daisy World is a model and it works. NASA wouldn't be using it if it didn't. Whether StudioT disagrees with it besides the point, it's being used. Working models are descriptions that fit the prevailing data. GT has limitations, it's supporters or Lovelock don't say otherwise. Newton's gravity still works and will get you to the Moon, but GR explains more. Even that has limits that requires a new theory, and so it goes on.

[studiot]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Whether StudioT disagrees with it besides the point, it's being used.

Where did I say I disagreed with it ?

It's a moot question "How does one disagree with a model ? It does what is does, no more no less"

But if you wish me to question it, what does it say about the impact of an asteroid sufficient to wipe out 90% + of the existing life ?

 

Your Harvard article refers to Daisy World as well.

[StringJunky]

45 minutes ago, studiot said:

But if you wish me to question it, what does it say about the impact of an asteroid sufficient to wipe out 90% + of the existing life ?

Your Harvard article refers to Daisy World as well.

What do you mean?

[studiot]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

What do you mean?

I meant

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Where did I say I disagreed with it ?

Which has a question mark at the end to indicate a question.

 

If you are referring to the lattr part of my post, I was asking if the daisy model can cope with an event, cause by an external agent,  similar to one which actually occurred on Earth and significantly change the course of both Earth's history and that of life on it.

My ultimate point being that there were a somewhere between 5 and 10 events of this nature over the earth's geohistory.

 

[joigus]

48 minutes ago, studiot said:

If you are referring to the lattr part of my post, I was asking if the daisy model can cope with an event, cause by an external agent,  similar to one which actually occurred on Earth and significantly change the course of both Earth's history and that of life on it.

My ultimate point being that there were a somewhere between 5 and 10 events of this nature over the earth's geohistory.

Indeed. The daisy-world model is fine to the effects of understanding basic processes of feedback operating during periods of relative stasis, or very slow variation of environmental factors. Lotka-Volterra models, IMO, do a very similar job without necessarily identifying the mechanism responsible for the feedback. Constant reproductive rates and constant coefficients of competition/predation, etc do the job of implementing these immovable conditions.

When something catastrophic happens --whether cosmic, in the form of an asteroid, or internal, in the form of, e.g., an unpredictable mutation-- from the POV of the mathematician modelling it-- you would have to assume time-dependent coefficients that implement this catastrophic behaviour. Otherwise it's equilibrium solutions or oscillatory ones as long as the differential-equation model is valid.

[StringJunky]

All bets, are off, aren't they, when a catastrophic event occurs? Instead of progressive  interlinked order, you'll end up with a stochastic situation for some, probably, geological length of time. Back to square one, but the outcome of much will change. The Daisy World concept should still hold. Albedo still matters.

[dimreepr]

17 hours ago, StringJunky said:

All bets, are off, aren't they, when a catastrophic event occurs? Instead of progressive  interlinked order, you'll end up with a stochastic situation for some, probably, geological length of time. Back to square one, but the outcome of much will change. The Daisy World concept should still hold. Albedo still matters.

Indeed, but my question still stands; what exactly is it that we're discussing?

[sethoflagos]

On 7/18/2024 at 10:08 AM, studiot said:

I think it worthwhile agreeing on what we mean by 'feedback'.

I've been watching your comments on feedback with increasing interest, and you raise important points a) because there is an awful lot of misunderstanding mixed in amongst the loose terminology, and b) because it gets really complicated really quickly.

Loosely, feedback occurs whenever a process output is fed back into the input thereby modifying the subsequent output. However, there are some major provisos here, particularly with regard to causal links.

'Feedback' cannot as of current scientific concensus refer to the transfer of anything back to an earlier point in time. It therefore is not a transfer from an output back into the input that created that output. It is a transfer from an output phase into a subsequent input phase. Some examples may help explain:

On 7/17/2024 at 11:37 PM, studiot said:

My sketches refer to a real world marble rolling about in a bowl, where it finds a stable position at the bottom and stays there.
Jiggling the bowl to give a small displacement will temporarily move the marble some way up the side.
But it will soon roll back.

This one is curious since mathematicians tend to irk engineers by insisting that pendulum type system really are controlled by feedback, because... reasons.

I think the reasoning goes that since the equations of motion for an ideal, frictionless pendulum are time-reversible, they do not contradict the assertion that the last maximum displacement was a consequence of the next rather than vice versa. ie mathematically they are indistinguishable from a process controlled by negative feedback. Maybe that's a simplification, but at least we both agree that this system does not feature feedback. 

Compare with a father pushing a child on a swing. Hopefully, the father monitors the vertical displacement on the forward swing, compares that against some recommended maximum enjoyment criterion and adjusts his push at the top of the backswing accordingly. If we assign a phase angle 0 to the top of the backswing, and a phase angle pi radians to the top of the forward swing, it is clear that the input is being modified with an antiphase addition from the output - classic negative feedback.

On 7/18/2024 at 10:08 AM, studiot said:

Would you call auto-catalysis feedback ?

Arguably so, I think. Consider the following reaction.

2H₂S + SO₂ -> 3S + 2H₂O

If the reactants are initially dry, the reaction does not proceed. But add a small squirt of water to get it started and the reaction rate will rapidly accelerate via positive feedback. The output product phase is 'fed back' (at least partially) into the input reactant phase by eg. turbulent mixing and the reaction becomes self-sustaining, limited only by the continuing supply of reactants.

[Agent Smith]

On 7/18/2024 at 10:10 PM, StringJunky said:

Daisy World is a model and it works. NASA wouldn't be using it if it didn't. Whether StudioT disagrees with it besides the point, it's being used. Working models are descriptions that fit the prevailing data. GT has limitations, it's supporters or Lovelock don't say otherwise. Newton's gravity still works and will get you to the Moon, but GR explains more. Even that has limits that requires a new theory, and so it goes on.

Why would NASA use it? I mean it works as a simulation, but many (eminent?) scientists have criticized late Lovelock for what they probably think is jumping to conclusions. Is there evidence that earth is also a Daisy World, albeit more complex? 

On 7/18/2024 at 7:20 PM, dimreepr said:

What exactly is your question? 

It seems to be lost down this rabbit hole, I found...

Has The Gaia Hypothesis been falsified? 

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, Agent Smith said:

Has The Gaia Hypothesis been falsified? 

Of course not, (this reminds me of an aviation joke, the pilot reports, to the engineer 'something loose in the cockpit' the engineers report 'something tightened in the cockpit'.) it's just a thought about how something work's, but without the cypher of truth that can break the code, you can't falsify the god of the code.